President Ronald Reagan’s first memories were formed at his home on the South Side of Chicago, when, as a young toddler, he survived near-fatal pneumonia. One day, he dreamed of becoming a fire fighter, thrilling at the sight of a fire engine storming down 57th Street. As he wrote in his 1990 autobiography, An American Life:
When I was (three), we moved to Chicago … into a small flat near the University of Chicago that was lighted by a single gas jet brought to life with the deposit of a quarter in a slot down the hall … (and) I got a serious case of bronchial pneumonia … Once, while watching a clanging horse-drawn fire engine race past me with a cloud of steam rising behind it, I decided that it was my intention in life to become a fireman.
He would grow up to put out fires — of a global nature -- working alongside Pope John Paul II whom he considered his “best friend,” said Nancy Reagan, which this writer first reported.
The two had witnessed the horrors of World War II and were determined to end the nuclear threat — a burning aspiration and steadfast goal they shared in copious correspondence.
In 1981 alone, these two prominent characters of the world stage exchanged some dozen letters as Reagan was formulating his foreign policy.
It was, of course, during a tumultuous year in which both were nearly felled by an assassin’s bullet within six weeks of each other. They already had a natural bond, both enduring childhoods marked by privation; both sharing a love of theater and an awareness of communism’s horrors, experienced up-close.
By January 11, 1982, Reagan’s vision was clear.
“For the last several weeks,” he wrote his dear friend, as reported in Reagan’s Secret War: The Untold Story of His Fight to Save the World from Nuclear Disaster, “we have consulted closely on the events in Poland …”
Now he wanted to respond to “another joint concern, the prevention of nuclear war” — following up on Pope John Paul II’s letter of November 25 and a Delegation from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, both describing “eloquently” the Pontiff’s “conviction about nuclear war’s “nature” and “the necessity of preventing its outbreak.”
“I fully share your horror at the disastrous consequences of nuclear conflict; the ‘last epidemic of mankind.’ I am determined to prevent such a catastrophe … May we both successfully carry out our responsibilities to mankind.”
So, they did -- the two deftly working to maneuver the Soviet Union to the negotiating table, Reagan, from a position of military and economic strength, John Paul from a position of moral and spiritual strength.
That June 7, President Reagan and Pope John Paul II met for the first time in a 50-minute private meeting in the Papal Library at the Apostolic Palace, bonding over how, quite clearly, God had spared them, the pair now collaborating to end the scourge of Soviet communism.
Some two years later, on May 2, 1984, four months after the U.S. re-established diplomatic relations with the Vatican, lapsed since 1867, President Reagan and Pope John Paul II held a 25-minute private summit at Fairbanks International Airport, as the Pope headed to the Far East, even as Reagan was returning from a diplomatic “mission of peace” to China. In that historic summit they discussed global concerns, including East-West relations, Poland and the Solidarity Movement, the Middle East and Central America and, of course, arms control.
Their efforts succeeded and on December 8, 1987, Feast of the Immaculate Conception, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in the East Room of the White House.
Truly the close friendship of the two men, born some nine years and worlds apart — Reagan in 1911 in Tampico, Illinois, John Paul in 1920 in Wadowice, Poland — sealed the deal.
Such an important example and witness is more needed than ever given today’s temptation to resort to violence.
As Cardinal Adam Sapieha told young Karol Wojtyla, as dramatized in Pope John Paul II, violence is a vicious cycle. “If you must use a weapon, choose the one they fear the most.”
“Our faith?”
“Yes, our faith, and our intelligence. Our fine minds.”
